As business leaders round on Osborne over Budget, one says.. 'Stop fiddling with our taxes, George!'

'Stop fiddling with our taxes!': John Longworth, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce

With the Government set to reveal its 2016 Budget on March 16 and business confidence ‘fragile’, the Federation of Small Businesses has hit out at the Chancellor for failing to consult it over quarterly tax returns announced in last year’s Autumn Statement – and demanded he learns to understand small firms.

The pressure group’s Budget submission is due to be published tomorrow and policy director Mike Cherry said: ‘Confidence is pretty fragile at the moment and there is a possibility it could fall.

‘We have already seen with the announcement of the EU referendum date some exchange rate issues being created in the pound falling against the dollar, the euro and the yen, and I think we need to be watchful.

‘We are calling on the Chancellor to help business. We’ve got the National Living Wage, pension auto-enrolment and changes to dividends. Now we’ve got this idea around mandating of quarterly tax reporting – whatever that means in practice nobody seems to know at the moment.’

Meanwhile, John Longworth, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said of the upcoming Budget: ‘The Chancellor asked me: “What do you want me to do?”. I said: “Nothing. Do no harm. Stop fiddling around with the tax system and business taxes”. That’s the core message.’

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Cherry attacked George Osborne over the announcement of quarterly tax returns by 2020, saying: ‘The issue is, the decision to make it compulsory has already been taken. There’s been no consultation on that.

‘It was announced back in the Autumn Statement and, quite frankly, businesses don’t operate in a way that enables them to have the information and to pass it through digitally. Just because you can do a quarterly VAT return does not mean you can do a quarterly tax report. It’s not the way most businesses work.

‘A significant number of businesses still do their tax affairs annually and we’re trying to help Revenue & Customs understand the problems around this and get it to remove the mandated bit.

‘Making it mandatory at this moment is just not an option because ultimately if you have a mandated system, you have to end up with enforcement and fines.’

A petition – ‘Scrap plans forcing self employed & small business to do 4 tax returns yearly’ – was signed by 110,000 people in January on Parliament’s petitions website.

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BCC boss John Longworth tells George Osborne to 'stop fiddling' with tax system